


all is calm, all is bright

by bonnibels



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: M/M, plotless christmas fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 13:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5499305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonnibels/pseuds/bonnibels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isa has never been the type to keep up with holidays, but with a coworker as festively-inclined as Kawara, who’d taken to wearing a santa hat to work and been humming holiday tunes since late November, he couldn’t have missed this one if he wanted to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all is calm, all is bright

**Author's Note:**

> for mily who said a long time ago i should write fluff of the otp. i don't know if it turned out very fluffy but oh well.

 

“Isa, you’re still here?”

 It sounds like a question, but Isa doubts that Dr. Kawara is at all surprised to find him here, given that it is here, hunched over his desk in the lab, that Isa spends most of his waking hours. Through the window, foggy and snow-rimmed, he can make out the faint glow of streetlamps and strings of festive lights, poking through the ever-earlier darkness like a picture out of a seasonal calendar.

 “It’s not even six yet, sir.”

 Ryuuji comes around the lab table and perches on a stool to sit opposite him; he has never been the type to wait for an invitation. Warmth radiates from his insulated feathers.

“But’s it’s Christmas Eve. Lots of birds are heading out early.” His grin is easy, sincere. He adds, “You’re not one for keeping up with holidays, huh?”

This is an admittedly reasonable assumption—Isa had only in passing remembered his own hatchday a few weeks prior—but with a coworker as festively-inclined as Kawara, who’d taken to wearing a santa hat to work and been humming holiday tunes since late November, Isa couldn’t have missed this one if he wanted to.

“Not really,” he shrugs, hoping to close the topic there and returning his attention to his notes. “I really need to finish this report.”

When Ryuuji leans over to peek at his scrawled recordings, Isa can smell him, the same sharp, antiseptic scent of everything else that lives in the lab. The smell clashes with everything else about the disheveled Dr. Kawara, feathers unpreened and stained with chemicals or fluids from his latest dissection.

 Another bird pokes his head into the room and summons Dr. Kawara away to answer a phone call, unwittingly rescuing Isa from the doctor’s babbling. Strangely enough, he finds it harder to concentrate in the sudden silence.

In the hall, Ryuuji is engaged in a hushed but heated conversation, but this is of no importance to Isa, and it is purely by accident and an overly keen sense of hearing that he catches bits and pieces—a medley of _I know_ s and _I’m sorry_ s and _I love you_ s.

 

.

 

This is what Isa knows about love: that it is a complicated but perfectly comprehensible equation involving hormones and neurotransmitters and chemical reactions—dopamine, adrenaline, et cetera. He is satisfied with this rudimentary understanding. He’s just a biologist.

His memories of his parents are fleeting and foggy, and failing to stir any emotional reaction when he does happen to recall them.  He can’t imagine how he could experience love anywhere, if not here, in the hazy-warm memory of his mother’s wings, where such sentiments were supposedly nurtured.

This is one of several factors contributing his hypothesis that he is unsuited to parenthood, something he has contemplated idly since his initial conversation with Dr. Kawara on the topic. Ryuuji had breached the subject again some weeks ago, asking, rather out of the blue, whether Isa planned on having any children.

Isa had shrugged, _I don’t suppose I do_.

_Do you dislike children?_

_Not particularly… It wouldn’t make much sense to dislike them, would it? After all, a child isn’t a separate species, but a developmental stage found in most organisms._

And Ryuuji had laughed, a delighted squawk. _I don’t know why you think you wouldn’t make a good father._

Isa had been unsure what was funny or what the doctor meant, so he’d said nothing.

_You might surprise yourself one day. You’re young, Isa. You never know what kind of circumstances might persuade you to take on new challenges._

But Isa was not thinking of mysterious circumstances or new challenges, his attention held, instead, by Kawara’s smiling red eyes, dark-rimmed from one too many late nights in the lab. By the weight of Kawara’s laugh in the pit of Isa’s stomach, so heavy he felt it might drop right through the bottom, a sensation that confused and fascinated him. Then the doctor had blinked curiously at him, and he realized he’d been staring, and turned away.

 

.

 

“Hey, Isa!”

It has been nearly three hours and Isa has hardly moved a feather.

 “I’m going to take a break. Wanna join me?”

Isa declines politely without even sparing him a glance, so Ryuuji’s pout is lost on him. (Not that it would have done him much good anyway.)

A few minutes later, a plate appears in front of Isa. The brilliant red strawberry catches his eye first, then the large piece of sponge cake which it adorns. This is joined by a steaming mug. The all-too familiar humming—a fanciful tune Isa knows vaguely, but cannot recall the name of—gives away the perpetrator.

“I bet you haven’t eaten since lunch, have you?” Ryuuji clucks, another of his observations thinly disguised as a question. He’s looking even more unkempt than he did before, an impressive feat. Isa’s lack of response is answer enough.

“Thank you, sir,” Isa replies curtly. He decides to indulge a bit, just to be polite, mind you, and pecks the eyesore of a strawberry off the top of the cake first.

Ryuuji rambles, “I don’t know how you take your coffee… or if you would have preferred tea, for that matter. Although I think cake tastes better with coffee, don’t you? Plus it helps me stay awake whenever I’m working late like this. So I thought maybe you might like some, too. And I thought you were probably the type to drink it black.”

Isa sips from the mug to hide the small smile tugging at the corners of his beak. “Very intuitive, sir.”

“Although it is dove kind. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Dove kind?” Isa puts down his mug and examines the coffee studiously.

“That is, it’s Colombian.” Ryuuji’s grin is almost too wide to be contained on his face. When Isa says nothing, he prompts, “Get it? _Colombian_?” his brows raised expectantly.

Flatly, “That’s a terrible joke, sir.”

“But you got it, didn’t you? I knew if it was biology-related you would get it.” He is referring to Isa’s reputation among their coworkers for his impressive inability to understand jokes (which so often referenced pop culture or some other topic Isa has no memory for) and Ryuuji seems terribly pleased to have broken through this apparent barrier. Isa decides not to give him the satisfaction of an answer, instead turning his attention to his cake.

This seems to satisfy Ryuuji just as well. “You like it?”

“It’s quite delicious, sir.”

Ryuuji beams. “Great! I’ll give your regards to my wife.”

Isa puts his fork down.

“Her baking is the best! She made an extra big cake this year for me to take to work and share with everybirdie. There’s a lot left, so have as much as you like. We should finish it soon before it gets stale.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I doubt I’ll be able to help you finish it. My stomach is rather sensitive to sweets.” He nudges his plate to the side. “In fact, I’d better quit while I’m ahead.”

Something like disappointment flickers across Kawara’s face, and it feels like a sharp peck directly to Isa’s heart.

“If you don’t mind my asking, sir, why aren’t you at home with your wife?” He is almost monotone with the attempt to sound nonchalant, to crush down everything he means by it—why are you here? leave me alone. i don’t need-

“You sound like her,” Dr. Kawara sort of laughs, looking sheepish and awkward, but unoffended. “I was going to try to get home somewhat early tonight, but… we’ve had some…uh, _unexpected_ results with that test tube project so my team might be stuck here all night trying to sort it out.”

Isa swallows. “That is quite unfortunate.” He didn’t know Dr. Kawara had been assigned to the in vitro project.

“Well, it’s all part of the job. My wife is usually pretty understanding. But lately my mother-in-law has gotten her talons into her and gotten her all worked up. The other day she said, ‘if your son doesn’t have a strong male influence around, he’ll grow up to be a cross-dresser or something!’” he imitates in a shrill pitch. “She drives me nuts sometimes.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about that. That Freudian stuff is nonsense.”

“Oh, I’m not worried. Even if it were true, I think my son would look cute in a dress.”

In the brief, awkward silence that inevitably follows such bold statements, the tension gradually seeps from Isa between long sips from his coffee mug, replaced by something unexpected—guilt? It occurs to him that he could offer to finish up whatever Kawara is working on so he could go home and spend the rest of the night with his wife and fledgling, although it is already half past nine. But he imagines Dr. Kawara wouldn’t take him up on such an offer, and perhaps he doesn’t want to take the chance that he would, so he decidedly keeps his beak shut.

“Besides,” Ryuuji finally breaks the silence. “I think it would also be pretty irresponsible to go off and leave a kid alone on Christmas Eve.”

“I’m not exactly a child, sir,” says Isa, only a hint of petulance remaining in his tone. Because he’s not, exactly. Not in partridge years, anyway, and certainly not by his own standards.

“I know, I know,” Ryuuji chuckles, reaching over to ruffle Isa’s headfeathers in a way that suggests he does not, in fact, know.

But this is just how the doctor is, Isa reminds himself—annoyingly playful, overly familiar, always watching out for co-workers, offering help or advice that wasn’t asked for. He’s like this with everybody, and Isa is no different.

“Anyway, do you want my strawberry? Here, take it.”

“No, thank you, sir.”

“C’mon, Isa, you keep glancing at it like a shy, love-struck high school student! It’s breaking my heart!”

“That is absolute-“

“Open up!”                    

A brief tussle ensues as Isa tries to fend off the invading strawberry. It’s interrupted by a crashing sounding from somewhere down the hallway, causing both birds to sit up in alarm.

A distressed call comes from the direction of the commotion, somewhere down the hall. “Dr. Kawara? Are you planning on rejoining us anytime soon? We could really use your help in here!”

“Is everything alright in there?” Isa asks.

“Oh, we’ve got it under control,” Ryuuji waves his wing dismissively. “I better get back to them, though. I might find somebirdie to help me finish this cake yet!”

He hops from his seat and heads for the door, resuming his earlier humming.

“Sir?” Isa suddenly has an inexplicable feeling the sound will drive him mad.

“Huh?”

“What _are_ you humming?”

“Oh. Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy. Sorry, was it bothering you?”

“No, sir. Not at all.”

Ryuuji grins and bids him farewell. Isa is left looking distastefully at the cake crumbs littering his formerly tidy workspace.

 

.

 

Once he finishes his coffee, Isa packs up and heads home, fluffing his feathers against the subdued snowfall outside. He’d ended up unable to concentrate with the racket being caused by some experiment-gone-wrong wreaking havoc in the lab. Whatever it is, he hopes they have it under control by tomorrow.

He’s kicking up snow without realizing it on his way down the street, and he’s irritated for reasons he can’t quite put his feather on, but imagines it is due, at least in part, to Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy which is stuck in his head and showing no signs of letting up. It could also be the curious warmth lingering around his headfeathers where the doctor touched him with more familiarity than any other bird would’ve lived to tell about.

He touches the spot, feeling for abnormalities, but he detects nothing except a steadily radiating heat. He decides he will definitely have to do some independent research on this intriguing phenomenon.

 

 

 

end.

**Author's Note:**

> i set out with one goal in mind for this and that was to have ryuuji make a dad joke and it wasn’t easy but I did it so please laugh at it.


End file.
